The Shroud of the Commonwealth
by Steve.Minnich
Summary: When Aleks emerges after 200 years on ice to find her husband dead and her son missing, she must navigate the nightmarish dreamscape the only way she knows how : just keep going. With a no-nonsense attitude, a whole lot of luck, and just a little clairvoyance, Aleks follows the path unfolding before her as dream, reality, and memory start to blur. Original take on game's main story
1. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1, Wherein Aleks Wakes Up to a World Very Different From Her Own_

If she were being honest with herself, Aleks Lisciewicz would admit that she never expected to wake up at all. In fact, as she blinked away the blankness of an indefinite sleep, Aleks Lisciewicz might even have admitted that she thought this all a dream. Aleks Lisciewicz was always honest with herself, or at least tried to be, and so this was exactly her admission as the door swung open and invited her to explore the world outside the cryo pod that had served as her bed, house, and island for the last who-knows-how-long.

The air was stale, sharp, frighteningly light. Aleks felt cold, and found she was hugging herself in an instinctive attempt to warm her core. Her arms felt slippery, silky, not her own. Her hands felt terribly weak, as if they were unable to hang on even to her own arms, and they fell back to hang limply at her side. _This must be a dream_ , she admitted to herself, _a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad dream_.

As the fog of deep, frozen sleep lifted, Aleks felt alone in a world of nothing, and tried, desperately, to regain each of her senses. Nothing, indeed, was all she could see at the moment. Whether her eyes were so unaccustomed to taking in any light whatsoever, or the room was too dark to see even to the end of her nose, she couldn't yet tell. Her ears, meanwhile, were bombarded. _Loud. Loud loud loud loud._ There was a steady, deafeningly high-pitched beeping, and an obviously pre-recorded voice shouting from above her pod coming through in indecipherable muffles. Still unadjusted to the suddenness of the world around her, Aleks focused on the voice and began to make out its message :

—GENERATOR SYSTEMS FAILURE. EMERGENCY POWER PROTOCOL ONLINE. LIFE SUPPORT UNSUSTAINABLE IN zero MINUTES. RESTORE MAIN POWER SYSTEM—

 _Shit,_ Aleks confirmed her previous admission, _So this is_ that _kind of dream._ Her eyes began to adjust to the low buzz of the yellow emergency lighting, which no longer seemed so blindingly bright, but began to soften and focus. She poked her head out to look around the outside of her pod. Before turning to look to the left or right, though, she wished she hadn't looked at all. Directly across from her, behind the cracked glass of tampered pod window, her husband's unmistakable head lolled lifelessly to the side, a single bullet-sized hole in the center of his forehead.

 _No! Yu_. . . It really _was_ that kind of dream. A bloody wicked one, in which nothing makes sense, and everything is going wrong. Aleks was no stranger to such a dream as this. _Yu. Yusef. I'm . . ._ She needed to reach him. If only she could touch him, pass warmth between their bodies, she might not be alone in this world. _Stranger things have happened_ , Aleks knew, _when I dream these dreams_. She had a fleeting memory, more like a feeling, that she had thought similarly when she and Yusef were first meeting : _I might not be alone in this world_.

At any rate, Aleks had an idea that her fate lay across the way, in Yusef's pod. She knew that something important would happen, if only she could reach Yusef. She took a step out of her pod, or tried to, rather, before her leg crumpled underneath her with as much resistance as a soak-frozen toothpick, the small flecks of ice between the wood grain chipping, shredding the pick with ease. Her legs were weak yet. It took her every effort to raise and steady herself, hands gripping the open doorjamb of her pod for support. She tried again to step, this time with a slow, careful precision. Yusef's pod was a simple six-pace away, but it might as well have been twenty leagues. In her measured attempts to teach herself to move in the hallucinogenic dreamscape, she couldn't tell if she felt her body was empty, or filled with lead. She kept her hands clenched on the doorjamb as she reached her legs out in front of her, each foot coming down with a thud that echoed through her body with the weight of the heavy dead. Pushing off of the chilled metal, Aleks failed again to steady herself. She nearly tumbled the four steps remaining to her husband's pod, and for a just moment, as her hands flung out in front of herself, reaching for Yusef, for metal, for anything to brace her fall, she thought she saw in his face the bright glow of the young, brilliant, troubled scientist she'd fallen in love with. Just a flash, and the vision was gone. Her hand hit metal, and plastic—she'd managed to hit the control panel. The door hissed open, and a cool air seeped out of the chamber. Yu's head sank lower as his feet slid forward in the pod, and his glasses fell onto Aleks's left foot. _Oh, Yu,_ Aleks breathed, picking up his glasses. _Definitely, definitely dead._ She leaned into his pod, pinned him against the back panel, and shuddered a tear into his cold shoulder.

Suddenly, as Aleks leaned into her dead husband's body, she remembered something. _Shaun_. He wasn't in his father's arms. Odd, she thought, that she couldn't remember why Shaun _should_ be in Yusef's arms. But he definitely was not there, and, as Aleks remembered, he certainly should be. _I need to find Shaun_.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2, Wherein Aleks Begins Her Long Journey_

With the rejuvenation of purpose, Aleks pushed herself from Yusef's pod and gave him a steady look. _I'm sorry, Yu,_ Aleks said to herself, as his body sank a little following her release. _I'm sorry you can't come with me on this one._ His shoulders sagged, thawing off the frozen shrug of his death. _I need to find Shaun._ She might have spoken that thought aloud.

 _I need to find our son._

She might have spoken a lot of her recent thoughts aloud. Everything seemed to echo here. Bouncing off the metal walls, she suspected. Her ears rang from the thump of it. Everything was so loud. _Loud loud loud loud_. She didn't know any more if she was keeping her words in her head, or if she was speaking them to the body that slumped in Yusef's place. Aleks smirked at the idea. _I hope you remember to ask me, when we wake up, how this one went._ She could almost remember the feel of their warm bed in the sunny Sanctuary Hill, with its wooded backyard and its view of Concord from the front window, if you looked between the Gaskins' and the Longwood's just across the way. Almost. She had a feeling, and then it passed. _I hope_ I _remember how this one goes,_ she reminded herself, _when we wake up_.

Aleks knew how hard it was to recall even simple dreams once one's awake. Conversely, she knew how hard it was to recall simple information while dreaming, and also how oddly her dreams, memories, and imaginations all seemed to flow together, forgotten and remembered, no matter her wakefulness. It was a peculiarity she'd struggled with since she was a child, though she could hardly recall that at the moment. All she could think of was her own child, Shaun, and what might have happened to him.

Suddenly, with an extra _whirrrr_ , a cracked _zzzzat_ , and electric buzz, the room flashed red before softening back to yellow, silver. A _tick_ and the tinny _frrzhh_ of crackling radio static and the walls were speaking again, as they'd been when Aleks first awoke. She missed half of the first play through of the recording in her surprise, but caught herself when there was a pause and the voice began again, with a different recording :

—DANGER. VAULT SECURITY BREACH. CLEAR VAULT OF UNWELCOME VISITORS AND FOLLOW HATCH EMERGENCY PROTOCOL NUMBER 27 TO RESTORE SECURITY FUNCTIONS.—

She listened, hoping that the voice would repeat its first message, which it did after a pause :

—WARNING. MAIN POWER GENERATOR SYSTEMS FAILURE. EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ONLINE. LIFE SUPPORT UNSUSTAINABLE IN zero MINUTES. RESTORE MAIN POWER SYSTEMS TO AVOID INTERRUPTION.—

The voice paused again, repeated the second message again, and would continue until it had repeated each message four times. The speaker system shut off with a sharp _zhweet_ as the static cut out, and the red lights cracked on one last time before the buzz tempered back to the low, steady _zzzzzzzzz_ of the emergency yellow lighting.

Aleks gave one final look at Yusef, said _goodbye, Yu_ , or _I'm sorry, Yu_ , one last time, and held her hand open in farewell. She didn't realize how tightly she'd been clenching her hands into a fist. She felt the release of tension in her fingers as she kissed them, and then slapped Yusef's cheek with the kiss. One for the road.

To the left, only some wide tubes, and some skinnier tubes, and a wall. _Every dream, same thing_ , Aleks thought, _only one way to go._ Aleks looked to her right, past seven more pods on either side holding fourteen other chamber-frozen bodies, past the room's master control panel, up a small series of stairs, and found what she knew would be there : a single door. On her way out of the room, she looked in on the other pods. Each face seemed familiar, but she couldn't name a single one.

 _Observation : a computer technician, sporting a lumpy, orange hazmat suit, is fumbling with the controls on the master panel. Deduction : the oversized standard-issue rubber gloves don't allow for the dexterity needed to work a keyboard. Observation : the tech is grunting from his effort, and, further observation : is flourishing slightly to hide the clumsiness of his hands. Assumption : he is sweating inside the suit, too, though, observation : the room is unusually cold. Deduction : this man is visibly afraid of sustaining radiation damage from any residual fallout. Deduction : he must be one of those warm-skins who'd never left the dwelling before. Assessment : he is repugnantly ordinary, and ultimately of little consequence._

 _Observation : the tech is done his job. A cryogenic chamber, the fourth and last of the right row, is hissing open. Observation : a slight change in the air pressure of the room is corrected quickly by the ventilation system. Observation : the scarred one is impatient. He is pulling the door open against its automated hinges when it pauses to allow the air pressure to regulate. Observation : the nursing technician, another unsullied warm-skin sporting a lumpy, orange spacesuit, is reaching out to grab at the primary target, but, observation : the secondary target is pulling away._

 _Observational correction : the computer technician has done more than his job. The tertiary target is slamming her fist into the window of her closed chamber door. Assumption : the computer tech has powered down the tertiary target's cryogenic stasis, but did not disengage the chamber's door lock. Assumption : the tertiary target is violently joyous in witnessing the successful retrieval of the primary target._

 _Observation : the scarred one is as calculating as impatient. He is pulling his gun swiftly to avoid confrontation with the secondary target. Observation : the scarred one is pulling the trigger to cleanly eliminate the secondary target. There is a loud crack of audial interference. Assessment : the .44 caliber revolver pistol is a crude choice, but effective. The scarred one prepares for efficiency. Observation : the scarred one is tapping his gun against the window of the tertiary target's chamber. Simultaneous observation : the nursing tech is walking toward me and holding the primary target. Simultaneous observation : the tertiary target's cryogenic chamber is emitting a hiss. The computer tech has restored cryogenic stasis of tertiary target._

Aleks steadied herself on the hand rail. She'd turned to look back from the landing at the top of the stairs, and now she was dry-heaving over the master control panel. _What the hell did I just see?_ She tried to make sense of the vision she'd had. For a moment, Aleks felt like she'd been here before. For a moment, she felt like she'd not been herself. _I still don't feel like myself_ , Aleks thought in earnest, _but that was – not me. This is me just a little off, but that was . . . that was something else._

Aleks had heard of dreaming inside of dreams before. She even thought she'd experienced it a couple times, though she couldn't be sure. She reasoned that this had to be that, a dream within a dream, though she didn't fully believe it. This felt different, like someone had planted a memory in her head, telling her what had happened to her husband and son. She felt the sort of enlightenment a student might feel who, after struggling in a crowded wood trying to find meaning in a passage, happens upon a teacher who, like a wise old owl, cracks open her understanding, the path forward now not only visible, but brilliantly illuminated. Her son had been kidnapped. _They – they took my Shaun_.


End file.
